How to get 4.1 sound out of old tv.

[spiderman12341]

Hey,

I have a gift for my friend which is a 4.1 sound system. His tv is a Hitachi-P50H401- which was made in 2007. I would be hooking it up vice optical cable.
Link below is a the sound bar.
click below on amazon link to see soundbar model.
amazon 4.1 sound bar made model click here

My question is if i plug in optical out to the tv and choice either normal surround or wide surround will 4.1 work? I know the tv is very old 2007 so it's codec may be really old to use. I know that hooking optical out to chromecast will auto configuration 4.1 but will it auto config apps like netflix, crave, amazon prime to 4.1 just out of curiousty? Shold I always use wide surround?

 

[-Jim-]

I appreciate you giving a Gift to a Friend, so I'll try to assist.

The TV, according to it's Manual (Page 14) will output Dolby Digital (often called AC3) which is a 5.1 lossy signal, and PCM (but no specifications given); so I'll focus on Dolby Digital which is common for the sources you listed. Of course the signal coming into the TV has to be encoded with Dolby Digital for the TV to send it to the soundbar. A lot of program material isn't encoded, or encoded correctly. So don't expect perfection every time.

The information on the soundbar is dismal, but the ray of hope is you "know that hooking optical out to chromecast will auto configuration 4.1". I take that to mean if a Dolby Digital signal is sent to the soundbar, it will automatically decode it.

Selecting wide surround on the TV shouldn't affect what is transmitted via the optical Cable. It just passes through the signal the TV receives from it's input. So provided the sources selected are Dolby Digital, then the soundbar will operate as desired.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[spiderman12341]

i will try netflix and make sure its set to 5.1 then do a 5.1 test thank you for the help.